A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay leftist leaning liberal progressive fit married college-educated former Baha'i NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma from California to Minas Gerais, Brasil.

Friday, July 14, 2017

By Lama Surya Das: Earth to New York Times: "We Live Here Too."

Lama Surya Das
February 25, 2004

The Media is Leaving America's Eastern Religions — 7% of the Country — Out of an Important Democratic DebateEarth to New York Times: "We Live Here Too."

(Boston) - February 25, 2004 - Lama Surya Das, one of the most
senior leaders of the 5 million Buddhists in the United States,
announced today his support for the gay and lesbian weddings that have
taken place over the past few weeks in San Francisco and his hopes that
the state of California and the city of San Francisco will take firm
action to guard the legality of those civil marriages and protect the
civil rights of gay citizens and their families.

"I've been watching the events unfold in San Francisco and what I
have seen is that the joy and love that these people are sharing with
each other is amazing and it is right," said the Lama, a best selling
author and teacher who is also the most highly trained Buddhist lama in
the U.S. and has been called "The Western Lama" by the Dalai Lama
himself.

"It's really been a transforming experience for myself and many of
those in my religion to see such happiness shine from the West Coast
here to the East Coast," the Lama said. "There are over three thousand
Buddhist centers in North America, and none have any problem with
homosexuality."

Since Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco ordered the city to begin
providing civil marriage licenses to all applicants without
discrimination on Feb. 13th, over 3000 couples have been married in the
city. On Feb. 20, over a dozen more couples were married by a county
court in New Mexico.

"It has made my heart glad to see it," said the Lama. "The director
of my Dzogchen Retreat Center is gay and in a long-term relationship he
would like to sanctify as a marriage."

On May 17th—coincidentally the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education
eliminating the "separate but equal" policy for races in America—gay
and lesbian civil marriages will begin to take place throughout
Massachusetts.

Not a 'Culture War,' a Religious War

Although some have called the battle over gay and lesbian civil
marriage equality a "cultural war" in the United States, Lama Das views
the dispute as a religious dispute.

"What we're seeing is a religious majority that is trying to take
legal rights away from a sexual minority that their religion purportedly
doesn't like," he says. "But our nation's laws have always tried to
prevent this kind of tyranny of the majority over the minority."

The Lama says that he takes issue with recent statements by President
George Bush and his wife Laura Bush saying that Americans ought to vote
on whether or not to make a minority within the country a class of
second-class citizens as regards to the rights of marriage.

"The idea that we live in a country where a majority can vote on
which legal rights they think a minority 'should' have and which rights
they 'shouldn't' is a frightening one," he said. "It entirely
contradicts what we teach schoolchildren every day in our grade schools,
middle schools and high schools. Are the Bushes seriously suggesting
that a majority should have the power to 'give' or to 'take away' rights
from a group of their fellow citizens on the whim of the majority?"

For the current President to suggest that the Constitution be changed
to define marriage in accordance with the definition of his own,
personal religion — even if it is the nation's majority religion — shows
a shocking lack of understanding of what this country is about and how
it was created to protect minority rights, the Lama says. "If our nation
were run strictly on a 'majority rules' basis, Mr. Bush wouldn't even
be President today. He lost the popular vote in the last election; he
wasn't chosen by a majority. Yet we don't hear him saying that the
president should be decided by the majority in the next election, do we.
That's very ironic."

A Nomination: Laura Bush to Give a "National Civics Lesson"

The Lama suggests that the president's wife, Laura Bush, who has
recently spoken out on a trip to California to urge the country to begin
a serious discussion on the issue, would as a former schoolteacher be
the ideal person to give us all a much-needed National Civics Lesson on
what is so wrong about the political processes that are currently going
on.

"America has been throughout its glorious history a country of
guaranteed human rights and has never been a country of 'majority rule'
at the expense of the minority" says the Lama. "Perhaps Laura Bush and
Katie Couric could re-read and discuss the Federalist Papers and Tom
Paine's classic, 'Common Sense' on 'The Today Show.' Coretta Scott King,
a long-time supporter of marriage equality, might also be invited.
Throw in Al Roker and Ann Curry and the visual point will be made for
certain. Discrimination is not a happy part of our heritage. It has
taken much too long to eradicate prejudice in our country, a lingering
problem we still have yet to overcome."

The Lama, an American who was raised in the Jewish faith on Long
Island and who became a Lama after undergoing decades of monastic and
philosophical training in India and the Himalayas and two three-year
stints of silent meditation in his teacher's cloistered hermitage
retreat, says that both his experience being raised a Jew and his
experience as a Buddhist make him wary of attempts by majorities to
impose their views on others through the instruments of the state.

History Reminds Us: "No Dogs or Jews"

"In Germany in the 1930s, municipalities using the discriminatory
Nuremburg laws posted signs on local swimming pools saying 'No Dogs or
Jews'," the Lama said. I'm not sure how the present situation in regards
to marriage equality in the United States is any different Why would a
country such as the United States, which has been a model of democratic
principles to the world for centuries, want to discriminate against
some of its citizens. It's bizarre. It's sad. It's frightening."

Events in Tibet, where members of the Buddhist religion have been
persecuted since the country was overrun by Communist China in the
1950's, provide further evidence of how important it is to guard the
rights of minorities and endangered cultures and peoples. Many Buddhist
monks and nuns have been tortured, disrobed, and even murdered by the
Communist invaders, and most of Tibet's 6,000 ancient nunneries and
monasteries destroyed.

"These were not two of the most admired societies of the last
century," says the Lama. "America should take pause before we do
anything whatsoever that makes us even a tiny bit like them."

As a resident of Massachusetts, the Lama says he was proud when his
state's highest court ruled last fall that the state could not legally
make Massachusetts gay and lesbians second-class citizens when it comes
to the rights and privileges in marriage.

"The state of Massachusetts has the oldest Constitution on the North
American continent," he noted. "And as far as I am concerned, it is also
one of the very best." (He is also a Boston Red Sox fan.)

As far as the Buddhist faith in America is concerned, the Lama notes,
there is simply nothing wrong with being gay or lesbian. "This is an
issue that seems to have been overlooked in this whole high energy
debate," he says. "It's just the way some people are created and there's
nothing wrong with it.

Every 'Seinfeld' fan knows that! Many
highly-respected Buddhist teachers are gay."The Lama was himself married to his wife Kathy Peterson in 2000.

Neither Buddha Nor Jesus Were Anti-Gay

"Buddha never said anything negative about gays and lesbians," notes
the Lama. "Nor did Jesus, for that matter. Both were viewed as social
reformers by their contemporaries. They both led their lives promoting
love and compassion, and protecting the downtrodden, the underdog, the
outcast and the powerless. I think we all could guess what Buddha or
Jesus would do in the present situation."

Despite the intense media coverage of the marriage equality debate in
Massachusetts and now nationwide, the Lama notes that he has never once
seen a member of any minority or Eastern religion quoted on the topic
by the mainstream media: "That's puzzling because we live here too."
The Lama notes that in our modern day American pluralistic society, at
least 7 percent of Americans are of the so-called Eastern faiths. An
estimated 30 million Americans practice yoga and mediation.

"It seems as if President Bush is taking a page from the book of Pat
Robertson - whenever Robertson attacks gays and lesbians, millions of
dollars in contributions flow to his coffers," he says. "For Bush to
follow this same path for the same cynical reasons is a mark of shame
for the U.S."